The Who The Royal Albert Hall London 29th March 2004

The Who The Royal Albert Hall London 29th March 2004Support from The Coral
This was the first major UK performance buy the “Who 2”. It was preceded by three warm-up gigs at the London Forum. The line-up was Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend accompanied by Rabbit Bundrick on keyboards, Pino Palladino on bass, Zak Starkey (Ringo’s son) on drums and Simon Townshend (Pete’s younger brother) on guitars and backing vocals.The concert, which was part of a run of shows in support of the Teenage Cancer Trust for which Roger was Chair at the time, was originally announced as a performance of “Tommy”, but for some reason that never came to be, and what was actually performed was a set of Who classics. Support came from Liverpool psych mod band The Coral, who were excellent. I went to the concert with David. This was the first time I’d been to the Albert Hall, and we stayed in a hotel close to the venue. We had quite good seats, close to the stage, on Pete’s (right hand) side. Roger had a terrible cold and as a result he was singing in an ultra raspy voice. You could see that it was hurting him when he sang. Pete wore black wrap around visor sunglasses for the first couple of songs, which made him look pretty moody. They premiered two new songs “Real Good Looking Boy” and “Old Red Wine”. It was great to see The Who in full flight again.

The Who in 2006. Many thanks to Paul Fenton for allowing this picture to be reproduced through WikiMedia Commons

It is unfair to attempt to draw comparisons between the current Who 2 and the 1970s Who. Of course, it is a different band, and it is impossible to recreate past performances. I am grateful that I can still go to a Who concert, and see Roger and Pete play those classic songs.
We got up very early to catch a train at 6am so I could get back up north and go to work.
Setlist: Who Are You; I Can’t Explain; Substitute; Anyway Anyhow Anywhere; Baba O’Riley; Behind Blue Eyes; 5.15; Sea And Sand; Love Reign O’er Me; Eminence Front; You Better You Bet; Real Good Looking Boy; The Kids Are Alright; My Generation; Old Red Wine; Won’t Get Fooled Again
Encore: Pinball Wizard; Amazing Journey; Sparks; See Me Feel Me.
The next time I saw the Who was at Live 8 in Hyde Park. They played a short two song set of “Who Are You” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, sandwiched between Robbie Williams and the reunited Pink Floyd and were introduced by Peter Kay 🙂 I need to blog about Live 8 on another day.
Tomorrow I’ll move to a Who performance in 2006 at the O2 Wireless Festival, Harewood House, Leeds, 2006.